There are some small beauty dish-like products for Speedlights, like the Strobies, but you can also use a real beauty dish and use a Speedlight mount and Speedlight until such time as you get a monolight or pack & head system.
$143 for a beauty dish and another $136 for the bracket? That is kinda expensive for a beauty dish when you can get one a lot cheaper on ebay. I like the double flash mount though.
saelee wrote:
$143 for a beauty dish and another $136 for the bracket? That is kinda expensive for a beauty dish when you can get one a lot cheaper on ebay.
That's why I said "one option is..."
You can find cheaper models, and you can find more expensive ones -- much more expensive. Since you usually get what you pay for, one just needs to find the one that fits his or her needs and budget.
E-Vener wrote:
That Kacey Beauty dish sure looks like a complete knock off of the one made by photographer Walter Melrose @ http://www. mola-light.com.
What's your opinion on the Speedotron beauty dish, Mr. Verner? Is it a complete knock off of Mola's, too?
I just exchanged a couple of PMs from Jerry (Kacey) and according to him, you must have misinterpreted what Walter said because Speedotron has never licensed any design form Mola.
I was the first to make a commercial Speedlight Beauty Dish then Mola came out with (this).
My dish is the same general shape as a Mola. I love the light this type of shape produces. It is not the exact shape of the Mola and is much improved upon.
Do you have any link or anything to support that Speedotron licensed the design from Mola/Walter Melrose?
EDIT: Mr. Verner, I was also wondering if you know for sure that Mola still has the patent to the design. I just learned that the Mola/Speedotron story goes back to the day when Walter tried to get Speedotron to license his design but instead Speedotron ended up changing a few things such as the contour and center diffuser. And these changes did not infringe on the Mola patent that was current at the time.
Jerry Kacey makes a terrific low cost beauty dish for use with Speedlights and possibly other flighting equipment. In my opinion it looks an awful lot like the Mola design but I'm sure there are differences.
E-Vener wrote:
Jerry Kacey makes a terrific low cost beauty dish for use with Speedlights and possibly other flighting equipment. In my opinion it looks an awful lot like the Mola design but I'm sure there are differences.
Yup. I posted above that, in my opinion, all dishes derived from the Mola design are all "knock offs" of the original. So there's no argument from me.
Of course, I don't see these as something like an eBay beauty dish kind of "knock off". I also said at one point that the PCB beauty dish looks just like the Profoto one, but I'm sure Mr. Buff did some changes to it to work better with his strobes.
Walter Melrose of Mola-Lights.com sent this message to me this morning:
"Just reading the thread ( note; he is referring to this thread). Speedotron used to sell our product as a dealer, not as a licensed manufacturer. Then they decided to make an exact copy of our reflector so they would not have to purchase from us. We started legal proceedings against them and then Speedotron changed their design to what they have today. Their engineer stated recently that the shaping they use does not alter the light quality, it is purely to make it more rigid.
Kacey's design is an unauthorized copy of our product."
Back to the topic of the products themselves: I'm not sure about this, but I think I read that the Kacey Beauty Dish is some heat resistant plastic, making it flexible yet strong. Can anyone here confirm this?
"Back to the topic of the products themselves: I'm not sure about this, but I think I read that the Kacey Beauty Dish is some heat resistant plastic, making it flexible yet strong. Can anyone here confirm this?
Tobi"
Yes the Kacey unit is plastic. Since an SB-900 doesn't have a modeling lamp it should work well for it's intended use and be a good lightweight solution.